Object databases find a new lease

By Eric WilsonNovember 12 2002
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Choosing the right technologies for university training has always been a tricky
exercise. Academics must bet their students' careers on what they believe will
be relevant to the IT industry three or four years from now. Technology fads
will come and go, enhancing or diminishing a student's perceived value to employers.
In 1998 Web design looked like a sure bet. Now many Web designers are doing
other things.

That is why the University of Technology Sydney's (UTS) Faculty of Engineering
has caught my eye, having just decided to train students on InterSystems' Cache.
This is an object database - where information is stored in a way mirroring
how it occurs in real life, not broken up into columns and rows then joined
(relationally) back together as tables. What is interesting here is that, from
an industry hype point of view, object databases are definitely passe - a "next
big thing" that fizzled out into a few niche markets. Yet for his new Software
Systems Analysis and Software Systems Design courses, senior lecturer Zenon
Chaczko sees a big future in teaching object databases.

"The new distributed applications, including applications that use Web Services
technology, are often built around object-oriented software systems' architectures,"
he says. "Such an approach is very appropriate for managing complexity."

It turns out row/column/table relational databases do not translate all that
well into and out of the hierarchical structure of XML, the textural protocol
underpinning all the Web Services hype. Object databases (which for marketing
purposes have been re-badged as "post-relational databases"), have no such XML
compatibility issues. Previously, object-oriented databases (OODB) were linked
to the failed "multimedia" buzzword but Chaczko bases his belief in the technology
on real-world problem solving, not IT marketing.

"Engineering solutions contain higher-than-average levels of complexity that
software must model and support," he says. "The main aim here is to achieve
a high level of congruence between the data model for the application and the
data model of the database. Considering all of the factors, it makes practical
sense to teach students how to design and implement systems that use OODB technology."");document.write("

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Students enrolling in the new courses will experience between two and four
semesters with an object database subject utilising InterSystems' Cache. Chaczko
thinks the "more natural" data-structures require up to 35 per cent less database
code in applications, cheaper maintenance and easier system expansion as business
needs grow. This is because for complex problems, object databases make life
simpler.

For IT managers, object databases may have some life in them yet, too. Reducing
training costs always boils down to decreasing system complexity - and this
is what InterSystems claims Cache does. Its spin on using a "more natural" data-structure
is that you might need train only a quarter of the number of database administrators
as a similar relational database management system (RDMS) would require. But
the reduction of complexity in the data-model also means a reduction in application
architecture training, because the system itself handles database partitioning
across multiple storage devices. For small companies this may not mean much
but for the big end of town, database partitioning hassles can be a showstopper.

Selling all this could be an uphill battle, because the IT market is over the
late-'90s' object database hype. It is going to need real-world proof, not IT
religion. For this you need a pool of trained people to support product sales.
That is why the UTS Faculty of Engineering deal is such a coup for InterSystems'
new Australian operation.

"Our Cache Campus program reaches out to universities and colleges," says Jim
Breen, director of learning services. "We want to win over the hearts and minds
of programmers. We're offering free software (for educational purposes) and
support . . . We're trying to get jobs and internships for students with our
customers."

Breen emphasised he isn't asking IT academics to get rid of any technology
they are teaching today. But he appeals to give students a choice between using
RDMS and OODB technology.

For his part, Chaczko thinks UTS has done well from the deal.

"We have unlimited access to new commercial OO technology, which improves the
quality of our teaching, and, in turn, InterSystems can use our faculty as its
reference base as well as an incubator for future Cache and OODB technology
experts."

So it's with good reason Chaczko has placed a few bets on unorthodox object
database technology - a big investment he's making on behalf of future Software
Systems Analysis and Software Systems Design students' careers. By late 2006,
we will know if it has paid off.